I didn’t win the next hand, either, damn it.
Thorin grinned like a cat that had cornered a mouse. “Tell me what made you blush when I asked you the last question.”
No way would I tell him the full truth: that I’d had… inappropriate dreams about him. Thinking fast, I said, “I was embarrassed.”
“For what?”
“Being reminded of my deception and how it led to such a terrible ending.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes, that’s what I was just saying. I mean, it was necessary to keep you alive at all costs, but to lose Inyoni and Kalani—”
Thorin grabbed my arm. “No, I mean you’re lying about the blush.”
I squared my shoulders. “No, I’m not.”
“You got over on me once because I underestimated you, but now I know what your lies look like. Tell me the truth.”
Since denial had failed me, I tried outright refusal. “No.”
“Oh, it must be good if you’re fighting this hard.” Thorin tugged me until I was virtually in his lap. He locked his arms around me and grinned like a fiendish imp. “Tell me. I’ve had millennia to develop my torture techniques.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
I squinched my eyes shut, waiting for whatever torment he was planning. “Do your worst.” I held my breath and anticipated his attack, but it never came.
When I opened an eye to peek at him, Thorin was staring at a distant spot and wearing a funny expression.
“What is it?”
“Shush,” he whispered. “Listen.”
I stilled my breath and imagined opening my ears. A distant yip yip yeoooowl echoed through the quiet desert night. The fine hairs on my arm and neck rose, and my heart skittered, playing a staccato rhythm against my sternum. Another, lower-pitched howl answered the first one. Deep shadows fell over the land as the late sun neared the horizon, painting the desert in pinks and golds and taking away the day’s heat as it went. According to Thorin, wolves preferred to hunt at night, and those sounded eager for the darkness.
In the cooling desert air, my breath came out in frosty smoke signals of dread. “Please tell me it was a coyote.”
Thorin shook his head. “Wolf. More than one.”
“But Hati’s dead. I’m sure of it.”
“Maybe Skoll called in for reinforcements.”
“What do we do?”
Thorin held his hand out to me, palm open. “Mjölnir. Now.”
I tugged the gold chain and charm from my collar and yanked it over my head. Thorin snatched the hammer and pushed me from his lap. He stood, flipped his wrist, and gripped the weapon, ready for attack. In an instant, he had changed from twenty-first-century man to Viking warrior god. He lacked only a helmet and a bear-skin cape.
“This was too easy.” I rose my feet. “Finding Skoll this soon. It’s uncanny.”
“I agree.”
The wolves howled again, closer that time. I counted four different voices but couldn’t be certain. I stepped beside Thorin and scanned the landscape, though seeing anything farther than a couple of yards in the low light was impossible.
“It’s like they were already here, waiting for us.”
“Yes,” Thorin said. “Exactly like.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Skyla didn’t wait until she got to the Aerie to send out word of our plans. Maybe she didn’t want to share credit with the Valkyries and went straight to Helen.”
I coughed as shock and indignation stole my breath. “How can you say that? She saved us all at those warehouses. We wouldn’t have made it out without her.”
“I’m just considering all the possibilities.”
“Okay, let’s consider that it was your beloved Baldur who barreled headfirst into that trap. He knew Helen wouldn’t hurt him—maybe he wanted you to get caught. Maybe he knew I would come trailing after.”
Thorin sneered. “Baldur hates Helen. He would never cooperate with her.”
“You ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? Sympathizing with one’s captor—it’s not out of the question.”
Thorin lurched forward and raised a hand toward me, fingers curled as if wanting to grasp my neck. “The last person to question Baldur’s loyalties didn’t live long enough to question him twice.”
I set my hands on my hips and glared at him. “Get your priorities straight, Thorin. Save your threats for the wolves.” I stomped a foot and threw my hands out. “You talk about humans wasting time with our short lives, but you’re so ancient your thought processes have started to petrify. You’ve gotten complacent, and Helen took advantage of it.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have aggravated his temper, but I was scared, and not just of the wolves. I was also mad at him for doubting Skyla. And, fair or unfair, I may have resented him for failing to see what was happening in time to save Mani’s life.
The way Thorin affected me frightened me, too.
“Get outside yourself for one second and try opening your mind to the possibility that you and your beloved Aesir are more fallible than you think,” I said. “I’ll accept that Skyla has betrayed us if and when you show me the proof. But for God’s sake, Thorin, I am not your enemy. I’m trying my damnedest to keep us both alive.”
Something like lightning flashed in Thorin’s dark eyes. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I sank inside myself and opened my vessel of fire.
“Put away your flames.” Thorin’s voice was low and raspy. He stepped close again. “I am not your enemy, either.”
I backed away. “The hell you say. You threatened me.”
A muscle in Thorin’s jaw flexed as his teeth ground together. “You provoked me.”
“Your self-control is slipping, and that’s not like you.”
Thorin’s nostrils flared. “That’s because you are singularly skilled at getting under my skin.”
“You were being unreasonable, and you’re mad because I called you on it. You’re so used to having no one challenge you that you’ve gotten apathetic. Someone needs to wake you up.”
Thorin stalked me again. I backed away, but the threat of the wolves kept me from leaving and running pell-mell for the truck.
“And that someone is you?” he asked.
Why didn’t I find myself a red cape and an angry bull to wave it at? Fighting a wild beast was probably safer than provoking Thorin, but I had saddled my high horse. Might as well ride it. “Who else? You said yourself you live an isolated life. You’re out of touch. You’re like old technology—obsolete, archaic. You’re prehistoric and nearly extinct, but unlike the dinosaurs, you refuse to accept it.”
Thorin clenched his fists at his side and gritted his teeth again. I never knew what move he would have made next because the wolves cried out, nearer than before. Their howls raised the hairs along my arms and on the back of my neck. The hostility blooming between Thorin and me scattered like smoke in a stiff breeze.
“They’re close.” Thorin turned and slid in front of me, holding Mjölnir in a ready position. He called into the night. “Come for us, you worthless mutts. No more skulking out there in the dark. She’s here. You want her. You can smell her. Why don’t you come and taste her?”
I understood Thorin meant to bait them, but a cold spurt of nausea stirred in my stomach. I tightened my mental grip on my fire and stepped closer to Thorin. He reached back and rested his hand on my hip, more to keep aware of my proximity than to comfort me, but it did anyway, conveying a current of strength and assurance, and I channeled it into my own power source.
Harck! Harck! Ahhwoooo! The wolves threw back their own threats.
“I can’t see them,” I whispered. “Where are they?”
“Why don’t you give us a lig
ht?”
“Now? Are you sure?”
Thorin looked at me over his shoulder. His breath rushed past my temple. “Trust me?”
I hesitated. “Just a minute ago, you were threatening me.”
“Solina.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Do it. Light up the night.” My period of recuperation at the hotel had restored my powers—not to full capacity, but close enough. My fire show in the warehouse was nothing compared to the energy required to convert to that other state, and I had bounced back a lot faster. I stepped away from Thorin and let the flames out in two blazing fireballs that filled my palms. Oh, and it felt so good, like scratching a hard-to-reach itch.
“Keep it low,” Thorin said. “Don’t burn out all at once.”
I clenched my jaw. “I know what I’m doing.”
Thorin knelt beside me, and my light flickered over him like a campfire. He raised his weapon high, the Hammer of Thor, and brought it crashing down to the earth. Starting from the impact point, a crack shot out across the ground, growing and widening as it went—total special effects moment, but it was real. Thorin and I fell back as the crack turned into a fissure that bloomed into a crevasse six or eight feet deep and about the same width.
The wolves came to the edge, baring their teeth and growling.
“A male and two females,” Thorin said as he drew back his hammer, preparing for a throw. “They’re all wild. Skoll’s not here, but he’s got to be close.”
After a flash of movement, one wolf went rolling, screeching, head over heels like a tumbleweed. It slumped into a furry pile and did not rise again. The other two wolves skittered away.
“Oh my God,” I wheezed.
Thorin grinned at me and leapt over the crevasse, graceful as a lion. He called his hammer back into his fist, and he searched the darkness for signs of the other wolves.
“We can’t keep this up all night,” I said. “I won’t last long at this rate.”
“Just one mistake on their part is all it takes.”
Rocks clattered behind me, and I spun around in time to duck a flying ball of gray fur. The wolves Thorin had sent into retreat had recovered and gone the long way around for a rear attack. One wolf, the gray one, rolled midair and landed at the fissure’s edge. The other wolf, a brownish one, came toward me in a crouch. Thorin threw his hammer as I lunged at the gray wolf, meaning to shove him into the crevasse. The victim of Thorin’s hammer, the brown wolf, barked a painful cry and fell silent. My prey yelped and darted around, moving more like a fish than a wolf. My fingers brushed his coat, singeing him, but he flitted aside before I could really hurt him.
“God, they’re fast,” I said.
The astringent stink of singed fur wafted to my nose. The gray wolf hunkered several yards away and growled at me. He wasn’t Skoll—he was too small and dark.
I bared my teeth and laughed at him, doing my best Skyla impression. “What are you waiting for?”
His muzzle crinkled into a mask of rage, and his teeth glistened in my light. He snarled and leapt toward me. I braced for his impact and called out more flames, but he twisted midleap, landed several feet away, and dashed around the edge of the crevasse, heading for Thorin.
“Thorin!” I shrieked.
He spun, bringing Mjölnir around in an arc that connected with the gray wolf. At the same time, a fourth wolf sprinted forward, appearing like a ghost from the darkness. He leapt for me, teeth bared, snarl ripping apart the night.
Skoll.
I gathered the remains of my fire, imagining nuclear bombs and sunbursts, and lunged to meet him. Skoll shrieked, a howl of mortal pain, and everything went as bright as a million flash bulbs. I was going, crossing over that line, the transition and loss of self. That conversion was happening again, and I couldn’t stop it.
“No, no, not now. Not now,” I said, as if protesting could help.
Nothing could help, though. Nothing could stop me.
But then, a boom of thunder… and another.
A torrent of rain gushed down as though God had gathered all the oceans and poured them over me, and all the lights went out.
Chapter Fifteen
I came back to myself, aware of cold wetness but not much else.
“Sunshine?”
I pried open my eyes but wrenched them shut again when a blinding light stabbed into my field of vision. “Ow!”
“Sorry.” Thorin clicked off his flashlight, and darkness enveloped me again.
I was zipped up in my sleeping bag, snug as a bug in a rug—a bare-naked bug. After freeing an arm from my mummy bag, I raked damp tendrils of hair from my face and asked, “Why am I wet?”
“I put out your fire. Is that how it happened at the lake in New York?”
“Yes.” I heaved a sigh. “I gotta work on it. I can control it up to a certain point, but after that…” I puffed out my cheeks, made an explosion noise, and spread apart my fingers, miming the disbursement of smoke and flames. “It’s all or nothing.”
The fire had burned away my clothing, and yet again, Thorin had seen to the defense of my modesty—what little of it was left.
“Oh God,” I groaned.
“What?”
“I was just realizing…” Realizing I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve seen my bare behind.
Thorin crouched beside me and watched a pot of water bubbling on my butane stove. He kept his face turned, showing only his profile. Good. Talking was easier without the discomfort of his direct stare.
“Would you mind getting a shirt from my bag for me?” I asked.
Thorin’s lips curled, and even from the side, I could tell he was smirking.
“Already ahead of you.” He pointed at a stack of clothes lying on the ground between us.
I snatched the pile and slithered farther into the sleeping bag. “What do you mean you put me out?” I asked as I wriggled into the leggings and a long-sleeved thermal. “This is a desert. Where did you find—” I remembered the storm. “You went all God of Thunder, didn’t you? Wish I had been aware of it. I bet it was awesome.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.” Thorin lifted the pot, poured steaming water into a mug, gave it a stir with a spoon from my mess kit, and presented it to me.
I scooted out of the sleeping bag, took the mug, and sniffed—hot chocolate.
“I’ve never seen anything like what you did, not since the days of the original Sol.”
Fresh from the pan like that, the hot chocolate should have scalded me, but I drained it in a couple of giant gulps and held it out for a refill, doing my best Oliver Twist impression: “Please, sir, I want some more.”
Thorin filled my mug again, dumped in two Swiss Miss packets, and stirred it into a thick, sugary mess.
“You knew the real Sol?” I asked.
Thorin looked up at the stars. “I knew her.”
“What was she like?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed a few times before he answered. “Lovely. Radiant, I guess you could say. She wasn’t around much. Things were more literal where I come from. When the legends say Sol rode in a chariot around the world, it was truth in Asgard. Her husband, Glenr, was her driver. Maybe the humans perceived her as the sun, but to us she was real. She was always a little frantic and tired, but she had a fiery personality.” He chuckled. “A lot like you.”
I ran my finger around the bottom of the mug to dig up the fudgy bits that hadn’t quite dissolved. “You liked her?”
“Yes. I liked her a lot.”
If I pried further, he would probably shut down as he usually did, so I changed the subject. “Where are the wolves?”
In reply, Thorin clicked on his flashlight. The beam landed on a lumpy, bloody pile of fur. I sucked in a breath and almost choked.
“Are any of them Skoll?”
“No. It’s the group he was with. I think they were sick. Rabies or something. It might explain their behavior.”
“And Skoll?”
“Your fire chased him away. He was burnt pretty badly. He looked like a blistered lab rat.”
“You didn’t go after him?”
“And let you go shooting star and risk losing you again for another month? I don’t think so. Don’t worry, Sunshine. He’s going to be licking his wounds for a while. We’ll find him again soon enough.”
Going after Skoll and killing him would have guaranteed the failure of Helen’s plans and removed the threat to Thorin and his kind, but Thorin had chosen to let the wolf go and take care of me, instead. My heart twitched, and another crack shot through my walls. If he keeps this up, I’ll have nothing left to resist him with.
I studied the dead wolves again and pitied them, regretting their deaths. “You really think they were sick? Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
“Look at them. They’re skin and bones, missing patches of hair. They smell terrible, and not just wolf musk but something rotten. They weren’t far from death, anyway.”
“And Skoll could control them?”
Thorin shrugged. “I suppose.”
I gnawed my bottom lip and replayed the fight in my mind. Skoll’s escape embittered me and stoked my ire. If not for the loss of my self-control, we might have succeeded in killing him. My failure tasted as bitter as old coffee grounds. I resisted the urge to spit.
“Sunshine?” Thorin asked, as if sensing my distress.
I waved him off, rolled out of my sleeping bag, and shuffled into the tent. After rifling through my pack, I found a pair of warm socks and slipped them on. How am I supposed to hike out of here in sock feet? I set that problem aside and set about repacking my things, anything to keep me distracted from dwelling on my mistakes and shortcomings.
Thorin moved around outside, clinking dishes and rattling gear, but that fell away, and silence settled over the desert. Rather, all the people fell silent. Wind whispered, and desert owls screeched and sang their other strange noises. Distant coyotes—not the wolves this time—howled and barked. Their haunting voices provided the perfect accompaniment for my grief.
Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) Page 14